People serving prison sentences have much higher rates of HIV, Hepatitis C, and tuberculosis than the general population. Unfortunately, competent HIV screening and care is inconsistently available. They also have higher rates of substance abuse and mental health concerns.  Once released, health care can continue to be inconsistent or inaccessible with all the life activities involved in transitioning back into the community. The health effects of individual people involved in the criminal justice system affect their families and communities as well. Managing chronic conditions of loved ones adds to the stress and cost of supporting someone returning from prison, and the costs of health care can result in untreated conditions that can be unintentionally transmitted to others. With the massive increases in prison populations, these health problems are an example of how mass incarceration is a public health issue as well as one of justice.

Join us next Friday for a webinar about Mass Incarceration and who it is affecting. Register here: http://bit.ly/chtawmi

Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights

White text over background picture of barbed wire fences

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS is 4-5 times higher among inmates than in the community.

Hepatitis C is 9-10 times more prevalent in correctional facilities than in the community.

Tuberculosis is up to 17 times more prevalent in prisons and jails than among the general population.

Justice-involved individuals like prisoners also suffer higher rates of hypertension, asthma, arthritis, and cervical cancer compared to the general population.

Inmates also age faster, demonstrating the physical health of individuals 10-15 years older in the community.

 Being healthy is expensive. There are the clearly established barriers in a lack of resources (access to nutritious food, treatment and medication costs, inconsistent insurance, etc) and lack of preventative services (dental, health, etc) which can result in more costly after-the-fact treatment. These expenses resulting in poor health and lack of treatment are crucial when discussing poverty and health, but these clearly established effects of poverty are not the only ones. There is growing research to indicate that there are effects of poverty on health that are not directly related to access to healthcare. Some examples include living in a more polluted environment and the constant stress of making ends meet contributing to health deterioration and complication.

It is also the case that some people are pushed into poverty by medical expenses, and living in poverty further negatively effects health in what becomes a feedback loop for many. Public health initiatives in the United States are gathering research on what policies and programs can help to address these complicated factors like poverty that affect so many parts of a person’s life and health. Federal initiatives like Healthy People 2020 have had social determinants of health as leading health indicators. The complexity of how each determinant affects the others means that more collaborative and innovative policies and programs are needed to support people to have every opportunity to be healthy.

Join us for a webinar all about poverty, anti-blackness and gender next Friday, 3/13/20 at 12. Register here: http://bit.ly/abpchta

Infographic titled Social Determinants: factors that Influence Your Health

Income: Your income can determine how healthy you are. How much you earn can influence both your well-being and how long you are expected to live. 

Income is linked to:

Savings

Mortality:  500+ infant deaths and 2.8 thousand low-weight births could have been prevented if all states had raised their minimum wage by $1 in 2014.

Housing

Disparities: Wage gaps persist by gender, race, and ethnicity. Men’s wages per hour in 2015: Hispanics $14, Blacks $15, Whites $21, Asians $24. Women’s wages lag behind men’s across the board.

Opportunity

Inequalities: The richest 1% of Americans can expect to live as many as 14 years longer than the poorest 1% of Americans.

Child Death: In 2014, 44% of U.S. Youth- more than 31 million kids and teens- lived below or just above the poverty level.

Cited from the Nation’s Health,: A Publication of the American Public Health Association

 We have presented some statistics on several health disparities faced by Black Americans this month. The people working to reduce these disparities are working towards health equity. Health equity, according to the American Public Health Association, is the opportunity for all people to achieve their best health. In order to do this, some factors that can create barriers to or facilitate best health have been identified. Though terminology sometimes varies, they are generally quality affordable healthcare, educational opportunities, housing, discrimination or Minority stressors, food security and access to healthy foods, stable income and job security, environmental quality, and neighborhood conditions. These factors are complicated, and often related to one another. Having a stable and healthy environment, accessing continuous and quality services, and being free of an unhealthy environment are thought to be the building blocks for health equity. Working to increase access and stability, and reduce the harm of an unhealthy environment is the current path away from disparities and toward equity.

For those interested in how we can use the health disparity data to move towards equity, the CDC has many resources here: http://bit.ly/36F6VoJ

Infographic titled The Path to Achieving Health Equity

What social and economic factors must be addressed on the path to achieving Health Equity?

A central bubble has the words ”HEALTH is affected by” inside. Connected to the central bubble are 8 other bubbles with attached words: discrimination/minority stressors, food security and access to healthy foods, stable income and job security, environmental quality, neighborhood conditions, quality affordable healthcare, educational opportunities, and housing.

Health equity aims to ensure that all people have full and equal access to opportunities that enable them to lead healthy lives.

This infographic was created by the Health Equity Institute for Research, Practice and Poli

The CDC keeps track of many different health data sets. One of these is called potentially preventable deaths. This is something of a confusing public health term.  The number of these potentially preventable deaths can be thought of as a public health goal. If all people received appropriate and timely treatment or effective public health intervention, the potentially preventable deaths would equal zero. To complicate this term even more, there are certain risk factors that are considered modifiable or controllable as a way to potentially prevent a death from things like heart disease and stroke by lowering the risk of a cardiac event or a stroke. Those risk factors are: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cigarette smoking, diabetes, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity. This is one of the current public health prevention strategies for the outcome disparities like Black men being over-represented in potentially preventable death from heart disease and stroke. As we discussed last week, disparities are complex problems with many factors, and public health workers know that effective prevention efforts must be combined with increased access to quality treatment to address them. 

Interested in information about health disparities in Philadelphia? Join us next Friday for a webinar about lower limb amputations presented by Dr. Marcelin. Register here: http://bit.ly/rgdple

Title: Black men are at highest risk of dying early from heart disease and stroke

Two bar charts are shown, one for men and one for women. The X-axis is labeled with different racialized categories, and the Y-axis is labeled preventable deaths per 100,000 people.

For the “men” bar chart, the numbers (or preventable deaths) are as follows:

Black: 143

American Indian/Alaska Native: 90

White: 81

Hispanic: 63

Asian Pacific Islander: 47

For the “Women” bar chart, the numbers are:

Black: 78

American Indian/Alaska Native: 46

White: 36

Hispanic: 30

Asian Pacific Islander: 22

Source: the national vital statistics system, US Census Bureau, 2010